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Amazon Japan Offers Barcode Purchases via Camera Phone
Zode writes "Jesse James Garrett reports
that Amazon Mobile Japan customers can purchase a item with their camera phones. "Snap a photo of a product bar code using your cell phone, and Amazon Japan will give you a price check," according to Garrett, relaying from this article in Ketai Watch (Wireless Watch).
Here's the English translation from Babelfish."
...in 6 years. That's how these things tend to go.
also 4th post.
It looks as though the shopping is done from bar codes on Real-ads :)
:)
Bar codes are kinda hard to get right on a mobile phone camera (but I think high end only).
This is the beginning of a new cross-shopping trend. Enter a shop, look for a product , enter in amazon , measure urgency vs economy , pick it up or order
I already saw a company in India offer an IR universal remote control for their phones (Nokia 3220 IIRC) . Was a trial version for 15 days after which it asks whether you want to buy the app. You pay for it through your mobile too and the bill comes down to you as part of your monthly phone bill.
M-commerce , eh ?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
you could put the price on the bar code tag instead, thereby saving your customers time and energy.
They won't even need a cell phone. Imagine that!
That's amazingly far out. It sounds like something from a scifi movie... but it could turn out to be useful. I doubt my camera phone can take such clear pictures (hey, I have trouble recognizing myself) but all things are possible in Japan. Just out of curiosity (the Babelfish article did NOT make sense) would this mean that while buying something at a shop, you would realize it's cheaper on Amazon? I don't know, taking into account shipping and the 1-2 days wait for products, I would just buy it at the store while it was right in front of me.
Why is Amazon publishing my male information?
The main problem I've seen with QR codes is that they are printed too small and can't be scanned with cellphone cameras. Other than that, they are great for business cards when combined with WAP. You can print up your WAP-enabled code and zap your contact data directly into someone's cellphone.
How long until bookstores forbid the use of camera phones? I think many bookstore owners would be less than pleased if people only entered their store to be able to buy books from some other place.
John Carmack fan, browsing at +5 since 1999.
is standard barcodes and we could do price comparisons in the same way that shazam tags recorded music.
Imagine sending a picture of a barcode to ebay to see if there's an auction for that item running.
Well, this seems like a neat system, however, I hardly ever use Amazon as a price referance, I tend to look at ebay when I buy things. If it's retail, then it's retail. It's the aftermarket price that I worry about... Unless www.pricewatch.com can come up with a system like this, that woud be snazzy
--
Great that this idea is being implemented.I have thought of fiddling with the Dutch equivalent of Pricewatch and Froogle on my Treo 600 in a store to see for instance what a certain keyboard would cost elsewhere. In the end I ended up with searching online first for what I wanted and just recording the prices on a paper list. (envelope scraps are just so passe)
I would like to add a feature request. Could they hook it up to the review sections as well, so that it becomes possible not only to see how much it costs elsewhere, but also if people like it at all. Even nicer would be if it could turn into some augmented shopping list, complete with tips like If you buy this, you will need that etc.
Use Adsense for Charity
Anyone rember the QueCat barcode scanner? This kind of concept isn't anything new. But taking a picture of the barcode instead fo just integrating a tiny scanner is like using handgrenades when bugspray was sufficent. Why not just put a barcode scanner on it.
First, one of the benefits of bar codes is that you don't have to put individual price tags on items anymore.
Second, if you had to pay someone to manage all of those price tags, you'd have to raise your prices thereby making amazon an even more attractive alternative and losing even more business in the proces.
Third, did you even think about what you were suggesting before you did it?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
What if someone stole your phone? Could they just go on a spending spree?
Remember children, all generalizations are wrong.
Actually, that's the default style of code that Docomo phones usually use - I first played with it at McDonald's, when I saw one printed on the tray insert (the paper they stick on top of the tray.) I didn't even have to get close or anything; once the phone was in bar code reader mode, it found it and scanned it automatically.
The cameras in Japanese cell phones are usually above 1 Megapixel, so more than enough resolution to resolve bar codes.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
QR codes are 2-dimensional barcodes. But even at the resolution you are saying, the cameras fail to read many badly printed codes.
The problem in many cases is that the code is too small to discern by the reading hardware/software. QR codes can even be self-correcting such that even if you lose up to 75% of the original code the full amount of information is still available. But sometimes those codes printed on business cards are just too small to make out for the keitai.
Gee, good computer shops already have the problem that people come to them for advice and then go to the crappy cheap shop for their actual purchase. Only to return to the good shop when things go wrong and then be upset that no we don't fix other shops computers for free.
Friend of mine is about to commit murder if he gets one more Dell on the counter with a demand to fix it for free because it cost a lot. For free of course.
Sadly this seems to be the way of the future. Brick and mortar shops can never hope to match the storage space and ease of access (no parking problems on the net or busses that don't run on weekends) and lack of costs of internet shops. But internet shops can never meet most humans desire to touch before they buy. Photo's just ain't the same as actually holding a product in your hand. Doesn't matter much for memory or a cpu but an Mp3 player or keyboard is different.
But I can hardly imagine that brick and mortar shops will be happy to function as the display windows. Look forward to people being kicked out by security.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
More than once in Borders I've found a computer book for £30-40 that I will check with Amazon before buying in-store. Sometimes it's cheaper, sometimes I want the book now. As someone else said I expect Borders' friendly no-hassles attitude to change the moment they spot someone typing an ISBN into their phone (or snapping a barcode).
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
I saw Jeff Bezos on TechTV about a year ago and he talked about this technology as being a precursor to complete optical product recognition.
...not that I would use such a service, even if it existed... ...but if you happen to, you know, come across one.. maybe.. let me know?
Essentially, he explained, you could take a picture of anything from the cover of a book to an action figure, mountain bike, sandbox, stereo reciever, sweatshirt or snow mobile and recieve price comparison from Amazons network of retail sites and "shops."
I remember it distinctly because it was the first time i actually felt that a camera on a cell phone wasn't the most idiotic idea I've ever heard.
This was, of course, BEFORE I discovered that women stick their camera-phones down their pants and take pictures, and ACTUALLY POST THEM ON THE INTERNET!
Hmm.. I wonder if Amazon.nl would give you a price comparison of THAT... hmmm...
Except for the odd mistake the translation is very readable... Time for the "loosely translated from japanese"... cliche to die
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
... but in my county you have to pay money to send photos from a cell phone to someone. So instead of spending my money on products I'm asked to spend my money on getting the price for the products? That looks quite strange to me. :-)
I knew the system allready but now amazon is joining this program it could just make a big flight.
I don't kow however if this would work anywhere outside of Japan. The cultural aspects of payments out there are quit different from those in the western world.
/(bb|[^b]{2})/
I ran the babelfish translation through a markov generator and was not surprised when the output made more sense than the babelfish translation. Here:
... ... ... doing
The Amazon Japan
did the portable edition of online book store "Amazon.co.jp" service
is started from 2001, but
was done attendant upon the efficiency improvement multi-functionality
of carrying. Were added in personal computer edition became purchase
possible. In addition, such as CD sales ranking of search keyword
ranking and American Amazon the male also information is published.
Also navigation and search function of the portable telephone and
can scan the bar-code of the commodity, also the service which with
the same sight the purchase possible commodity it can order directly.
At the same company, when the commodity which order and the friend
of the consumable have likes, when liking to know whether what kind
of related commodity sells in other things, with you say that utilization
when you said is supposed. EZweb, border phone live! Edition, while
looking at the trend of i mode edition, have assumed that it keeps
examining. On the 22nd concert was held inside capital. As for jasper
of Representative President same company,
"those where the commodity is discovered in Amazon with scan search,
become very simple", that appealing the easiness of the same service.
Concerning
portable edition "with respect to the strategy, as the importance
you consider also Mobile", that it does, "function of personal computer
edition even with Mobile steadily probably becomes possible. On the
one hand, keeps constructing also just Mobile feature ", that you
talked the future enthusiasm. As for access to of portable edition
Amazon.co.jp, if with the same
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
It means mobile and is used as a slang (or rather abbrevation) for mobile phone (which is keitai-denwa). So keitai watch is a news site about phones, not wireless stuff in general.
It's BTW pronounced ke-tai.
Buy all your crazy japanese videogames from
I would personally like to see the ability to scan a barcode and see results on your phone for what the product is going for on different online retailers (think froogle).
Also, does anyone remember those scannerz games where you would go around scanning barcodes to create monsters to fight with? That would make a killer cell phone game!
or else!
this report says the smart phones are under attack! nokia users pls be aware of fancy downloads - stay away from sites with freewares!
9 34 083.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/
This is the first time that I actually see a sane reason to have a camera in a mobile phone. They're too crappy for taking real pictures, they increase the weight of the phone by 25%, more and more places are banning cam-phones... But at least now you can use them to buy stuff at Amazon. ;-)
I wonder if they patented this...
[ takes picture ]
See, I just checked amazon. I can get THREE of these for the price you're charging.
Store owner: %^$^ @#$& $#%@%!
Cell phone owner: Special? What's so special about them? These aren't even new.
Store owner: %^$^ @#$$ %%#%@%!
Cell phone owner: Ohhhh... well, yeah, I guess you've got amazon beat there.
hey man go easy on the Yoohoo next time before posting....
I said 'readable', I didn't say 'good'... I'm at work. Anyway:
Amazon japan have updated the mobile phone version of the amazon.co.jp shopping site, which they run. The menu and search screens have been completely redone, and for iMode, there's a service starting whereby you can scan a barcode using your phone and look up or buy an item.
The amazon.co.jp online store mobile verison was opened in 2001 but has been remade in the light of the improved power and functionality of mobile phones. The 'home & kitchen' and 'toy & hobby' stores, included in the PC version of the site, are now in the mobile version, and products not in the PC version's 'marketplace' can be bought too. Recommendations appear too, in the form of search keyword rankings and the CD sales rankings from the US version.
The navigation and search functionality of the menu screens has been enhanced too. In each store, bargain corner products, 'campaign' (ie sales promotion) information, and discounted 'red' prices are visible -- as well as product images. In product search, detailed search features are available depending on the type of product, and a search can be done from any screen.
As a new experiment, the iMode-oriented 'Amazon Scan Search' service has been begun. With this, you download a free specialized application, and using the camera in your mobile you can scan the barcodes on items. After scanning, a request is sent to the mobile version of amazon.co.jp, and if the item is one that can be obtained at that site, you can order it. The same company also suggests you use the feature when ordering consumables, or when you want an item like one that your freind has, or when you want to see what related products are for sale. The 'Vodaphone Live!' version of EZWeb is also considering the iMode trend.
A product launch was held on the 22nd. Amazon's representative director, Jasper Chan, emphasized the convenience of the new service, saying 'With Scan Search, discovering Amazon products has become unbelievably easy!' Concerning the remake of the mobile version of the site, he said 'We see mobiles as strategically vital' and describing the enthusiasm with which the matter will be taken forward, he said 'Whatever functionality is available to the PC version will, more and more, be in the mobile version as well. On the other hand, we will also be building functionality specially to suit mobiles'.
The amazon.co.jp mobile version is accessed via iMode from 'Shopping Ticket', via EZWeb from 'Shopping'/'Books/CDs/DVDs', and via Vodaphone Live! from 'Shopping/Ticket'/'Books/CDs/DVDs/Games'.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Ok, I snap a product in the shop, but can I shove it into my pocket right then? What reason the guards have not to detent me? How does the physical stuff move? If I snap something in my home (and by some strange coincidence post the picture to processing number) would they still bill me?
So I could buy the book, walk out the door, scan it, see the price at Amazon, order it, return the book to the 1st vendor, and be done with it. All within a moment. Vendors are going to have to compete, or they're going to close and everything will be done by mail. People think this is cool, yet when Walmart comes to town, they think that sucks. Why? It's the same thing. Actually, Walmart employs local people, so it's better than Amazon.com.
The state of Vermont wanted to outlaw Walmart from opening up stores there. Yet they have no problem with Amazon.com or any other mail order shop undercutting Vermont retailers. Try and find a bookstore in Vermont in the next few years. It'll be tough.
-- No sig for you!
The good folks at Delicious Monster have the Delicious Library where you can use your iSight or other camera to scan your DVD library barcodes for ease of use. Quite pornographic.
Especially for making links on flyers easy to follow with your i-mode or ez-web (two largest mobile online services in Japan) enabled phone.
You just smack a barcode on the bottom of your ad-flyer (for the latest PS2-game, or whatever) and have people shooting them with their phone-camera and instantly get redirected to the product homepage. Kinda neat and really handy as entering URLs on a phone is a real pain in the ass.
These barcodes also confirm to some sort of standard (dunno the name), so it's easy for whoever to print out their own barcodes recognizable by the phones.
Buy all your crazy japanese videogames from
seems to me stores would use proprietary barcodes so that they arent always undercut by amazon or other sites.
id cringe seeing everyone double check prices, and use my retail (overhead) store as a browsing station.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Introduction, Preliminary, Inventions not Patentable clearly mentions something about e-Patents .. so that post can be easily forgotten .
India does offer Process Patents but explicitly prevents patenting naturally occurring substances or extracts there of. However you are free to patent your form of culturing or producing an anti-biotic or vaccine. Patent infringement can be enforced in India as is with any other country in the world. Interestingly , Prior art of Foreign origin are valid in India - unlike the USPTO .
Get an OSS Loving, Nuke Missile Desgning President for your country too :)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
or how about you just sms the isbn number printed below the hard-to-scan ( no dammit that's not the book I want ) and obtain the same thing????
---
1. snaping the UPC using a camera phone then send the photo using whole bunch of bandwidth over to amazon and then have a OCR-like software to read it,
or
2. punch in the 10 digit UPC then press Send?
Links aren't enough - need torrent - need gigs' of information to ' ' process ' '
Yeah, they split them because Japanese books are historically a smaller form factor than Western ones. Lord of the Rings, for example, is sold as an 11 book box set. Smaller books fit in handbags better, and given than nearly everyone in Tokyo has a painfully long commute, making books small enough to hold in one hand while standing is a good idea. I used to reverse commute from my place in central Tokyo out to the National Cancer Center East, about 2 hours in all, and standing most of the way. Little books would have been nice.
I'm not sure this will catch on or that I'd want it to with RFID right around the corner. How long before RFID replaces every barcode on everything? Can't be much more than 5 years. This is a very cool thing though, especially the idea of being able to look up reviews for an item you're looking at in store.
The CueCat is back?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Maybe the stupid (or naive) people are the ones that think you can't.
http://secretagent.textamerica.com/?r=1401078
http://secretagent.textamerica.com/?r=1402091
http://secretagent.textamerica.com/?r=1426079
It was 100% free for me. Email account was a throw-away yahoo account, so I don't even see any spam.
Who is the naive one again?
... if I stick a barcode on the sexy number in the mini-skirt that sits in the cubical opposite mine, and then take a pic of the barcode, that someone will buy her for me?
I'm buy-sexual... If I can't get it I buy it.
Free Firefox news reader.
Imagine sending a picture of a barcode to ebay to see if there's an auction for that item running.
I tried that but inevitably and quite rapidly my thoughts kept turning to images of naked babes and luxurious priviledge.
Could be my needs are different to yours.
Sorry. I'm just not in data processing mode currently.
This is the company that has been developing this: Neomedia
If you're already at a store, doing a price check, it'd have to be a fair margin for me to go home, order it over the Internet and wait for it to arrive in the mail. Both in terms of cost and time.
Usually, I do it the other way around though. Check online, then drop by a store if I'm near one. Same basic idea, only then I don't need this service.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It is against the law in Japan to sell books at under list price so this gimmick is not really going to work for books.
For other things to laws are different so DVDs, games, eletronics and other things Amazon sells this might be useful.
Combine this perl with the browser of your choice and you have the same thing.
9 21'|");
$!/usr/bin/perl
my $searchURL = "http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=%1";
my $browser = "kfmclient openURL";
open( F, "lynx -source 'http://www.upcdatabase.com/item.pl?upc=659556585
while()
{
if(/Description.+<td>([^<]*)<\/td>/ ) {
$searchURL =~ s/%1/$1;
system("$browser \"$searchURL\"");
}
}
close(F);
Now all you need is a program to turn a UPC picture into a bar code (can probably find one already) and you're off to the races
Unless you decide to buy a book when you are not at a book store. You might want to buy a book your friend owns, or one you found in the library.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
a couple of companies already do similar things with SMS (and have done so for years). For example in the UK theres an online retailer that sells electrical goods online. If you're out shopping and see something, you can SMS them the model number and they'll send you back their price.
I've only ever bought one thing from them, but it's just nice to use it to reassure yourself you're not being completely ripped off buying soemthing on the High Street.
Amazon's barcode reading functionality is very nifty I'm sure, but surely it'd be cheaper, faster, more discrete and less error-prone, just to type in the Book title or ISBN.
The Google SMS search allows you to enter a barcode and get a price check (presumably from Froogle). You can use the ISBN (price 043935806X) or the barcode (price 018208252145). Not as cool as using a camera phone for a scanner, but it will work.
Bookstores in my college town already ban cell phones. People would go to the bookstore to see what text books they needed for a class and either sms themselves the ISBN's or take pictures of the ISBN number. Then go home and find better deals searching for these ISBN's or buying softcovers from overseas. So now if they see you with a book in your hand and a cell phone in the other they ask you to put the cell phone away.
Mac people have had that ability for a while. Booxter was actually the first application to support iSight barcode scanning. It's fantastic.
Booxter is, hands down, the best application for cataloging books on the Mac.
Japan does other weird things like splitting books into two halves. I'm not sure what purpose this serves, since usually they're sold together.
How often do you read a whole book in one sitting, compared to the rest of the population?
If lightweight pocket Dictionaries were sold this way in Japan, it would seem to be a counter productive product.
Will display URLS on your computer for the product you photographed. Not neccesarily a purchase, but neither is the Amazon way. More at
http://semacode.org/
Busy aligning my non-linear thoughts.
Quote:
"Now all you need is a program to turn a UPC picture into a bar code (can probably find one already) and you're off to the races"
Ahh, more cool stuff from Japan that we don't get. Is there any cool stuff we get here in North America that Japan doesn't have?
Discussed in Wired a few weeks back...9 36,00.html?tw=wn_techhead_2
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,61
More info there than in this article (linking to blog entries is just another example of how Slashdot has bottomed out in quality)
Link?
It's impossible to actually send a barcode and get a price on a specific item,,,,,,companies decide what price associated with a specific bar code,,,you could actually get two identical barcode for two different product at two separate prices,,,o.k the chances are very slim but it could happen (in the whole big world)...My company has a barcode software and i can create whatever i want but the description and or price associated with that is to the discretion of the company...in order for that particular japan company to give you an actual price they would have to have in their database every barcode in the world with every companies's description of every item they have......it's farfetched
Anyone thought about the privacy issues? This will just fill the vast amazon market research demographic databases at an ever higher rate. Sometimes Amazon.com scares me as it is.
Not to mention this probably will facilitate undercutting local retailers. This kind of sucks in some ways, because there are many products that are sold with an "educated salesperson" service attached. Such as running shoes, stereo equipment, etc. So the person taps the expert's knowledge and then surreptiously scans the barcode to see if they can save $5.00. They do this after they try on the shoes or clothes, listen to the speakers, etc.
Disclaimer: I've been that educated salesperson for several years of my life.
Here's a demo of my UPC code recognition software for nokia series 60 phones: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/barcr-reader/ba rcr-alpha2-bin.zip?download
Right now it just displays the code on the screen. If you want to toy with the source, get a CVS checkout.
You need a macro lens on any current cell phone to focus on such close objects, or you need really big barcodes.
I should take this opportunity to point out I've been working on an OSS project to accomplish part of what this is. Here's a demo of my UPC code recognition software for nokia series 60 phones:a rcr-alpha2-bin.zip?download
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/barcr-reader/b
Right now it just displays the code on the screen. If you want to toy with the source, get a CVS checkout.
You need a macro lens on any current cell phone to focus on such close objects, or you need really
keitai means portable. Keitai Denwa means portable phone. Wireless is musen (literally no-wires). Fuck you slashdot
A 'store' where you shop but don't leave with the product in-hand. A place that has at least one of each product and knowledgeable sales people. They provide the shopping atmosphere (for which you pay them each time you use the store) and easy access to online shopping resources. They wouldn't need much of a stockroom. Possible or loony?